How Politics Is Ruining the Immigration Courts
Immigration judges are DOJ operatives, which makes them especially vulnerable to the White House’s whims
The U.S. immigration court system is in collapse. While the courts are still plowing through hearings and closing cases, a damning new report from the Innovation Law Lab and the Southern Poverty Law Center argues that U.S. immigration courts are more a politicized wing of the executive branch than a neutral system of unbiased adjudication. With close to a million backlogged cases, increasing pressure from the Trump administration to rush judgments, ever-tightening restrictions for asylum — as well as ICE agents stalking courthouses and the courts themselves disseminating misinformation — immigrants wanting to stay in the U.S. face an increasingly adversarial, and sometimes downright cruel, system.
According to the report, immigration courts “violate noncitizens’ rights in a systemic, pervasive manner.” At the same time, asylum denial rates in 2018 were at an all-time high at 65%, up from 42% just six years ago. The same study found that denial rates rose around 5% just in the first six months of the Trump presidency, possibly a reflection of Trump’s anti-immigrant animus. In many cases, according to the report, it’s the judges themselves who are creating a biased and…
